Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

Reassured reading the first translated volume of Eighty-Six I might not be “plodding” through an already-accumulated stack of later instalments, all the same I didn’t start rushing down that pile. Perhaps a bit more confident about the readability of “light novel” translations from J-Novel Club over Yen On, I went on to the second instalment of Otherside Picnic and read a bit past where its anime adaptation had left off (an adaptation somewhat less impressive than Eighty-Six’s). With that taken care of, I picked up the second volume of Eighty-Six, to the best of my understanding going into it still all material adapted.
( Filling things in )

Had I been clear straight off the translated “light novels” of a series called Eighty-Six were a “mecha story” at least so far as the young soldiers “stripped of their humanity” on the desolate front lines of “a war without casualties” were in fact piloting machines with legs (if four rather than a more humanoid and heroic two), maybe I’d have bought them one at a time starting with their opening volume. A few simple recommendations nudging me to to the point of ordering a bundle of the first six volumes was memorable in its own way even so. For one reason or another they wound up stacked and waiting while I watched their anime adaptation, but I remained aware my own track record with long series of translated-from-Japanese novels is spotty. By the time I’d been able to see the adaptation’s last two episodes I’d added another two volumes to the stack and had two more on order, to boot. I picked up the opening volume quite soon after watching the last episode (at which point “seeing where the story goes” might have become a bit less pressing), but with genuine uncertainty.
( First impressions and afterwards )

Every once in a while I do try to scale the high “free cross-border shipping” threshold of the online anime store Right Stuf by ordering other things than anime. Manga and translated novels do feel a bit less intimidating to work through than anime, even if rather often now I find myself reading in brief swallows and stretching things out that way. One omnibus of translated novels ordered, though, did find me a bit ambiguous in advance.

I recall the first episode of a science fiction anime called Crest of the Stars being shown back in my university’s anime club, even if it hadn’t been screened in my first years there. That opening had involved a boy’s childhood being interrupted by diplomatic conquerors from space. Some time after that I bought a collection of the series on DVD, but as with at least one other title I could name I was left wondering if the first episode had formed expectations in my mind the rest of the series had never quite addressed. All in all I’ve long been uncertain and suspicious and ambiguous about science fiction that just happens to include “interstellar governments where hereditary monarchies rule into perpetuity and common folk get no say whatsoever.” I do make an exception for Princess Leia in Star Wars, and for that matter I live in a constitutional monarchy with no personal desire to see it abolished, but the seeming shrugging assumptions in the “space empires” of science fiction do not appeal to me. Crest of the Stars did seem to amount to “become entangled in a system of hereditary rule, and get a thoroughly sublimated relationship with a cute anime space girl in the process.”
( One thing did lull me along... )

Noticing the book Humankind: A Hopeful History mentioned alongside The Dawn of Everything was enough to pique my interest. When I searched for Rutger Bregman’s book (translated from the Dutch) in the ebook lending service of my city’s library I’d (eventually) signed The Dawn of Everything out from, it turned up too. Perhaps it wasn’t quite as consciousness-expanding as the book I’d already read had been, but I was willing to feel encouraged by it too.
( It’s a bold case )

My area newspaper happened to run an article about an “unofficial biography” of Looney Tunes, and that got my attention. While I do wonder about a certain received wisdom weighting the Warner Brothers cartoon directors in such a way as to show “more” is known about them “first glances” would have it, I still started looking up book listings for Jaime Weinman’s Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite. Those listings, though, mentioned in their “you might also like” sections another book, this one by someone making the bold claim he’d read twenty-seven thousand Marvel comic books, more or less encompassing the “Marvel Universe.” Not that long afterwards, Douglas Wolk’s All of the Marvels was reviewed in my newspaper’s Sunday supplement.

Having read many fewer Marvel comics myself but conscious all the same of having lingered on the very edge of that universe for some years, that book also got my attention. A few daydreams about reading it turned into the sudden motivation to check my city library’s ebook lending application. Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite wasn’t there, but All of the Marvels was.
( A fractal assembly )

When I got to the cliffhanger ending of the sixth volume of the Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki “light novels,” I already understood the volume to follow would be “short side stories.” That status just happened to be signalled by a decimal point in the volume number; I’m familiar enough with that from the My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, As I Expected light novels, even if thinking of them gets me bumping into how their own setup seems it would be a bit more “realistic” than Tomozaki’s and yet their translation makes them a slog for me to read through, which then leads straight to “so why are you reading all these lightweight novels with numbers on their spines: is continuing on from their anime adaptations that important?”
( As I’ve said before, though... )

One early review of the manga Bloom Into You advancing a somehow intriguing interpretation of its lead character added something more to the complicated mixture of interests I take in “girls’ love manga.” I read the story with enough interest and attention to post something about every volume and then, after it had concluded (scotching that first interpretation others had been pushing back against ever since, but indeed engaging something altogether different in that “complicated mixture of interests” just mentioned, such that I thought “the next best thing indeed”), I went ahead and watched its anime adaptation. (I’d known the adaptation wouldn’t get to the end of the story, but as it turned out it didn’t even get to the point in the story its last episodes had been coming to anticipate...) Then, instead of finding time alongside reading “new manga” to go back through the series, I went so far as to order three translated novels about an important secondary character, the “third girl” Sayaka.
( One small sign of the story holding my attention )

Still working my way through the ebooks from my library I’ve gathered over time in a reader application’s queue-like function, I signed out at last an anthology of science fiction and fantasy with a somewhat generic title. I’m often conscious of a feeling, at least, that “I don’t read as much science fiction as I used to”; a complicated and unfortunate combination of things went into that over a number of years. The thought that short stories could be a way back was appealing (Ellen Datlow’s introduction talked up their appeal), but just getting started can remain a little intimidating.
( Blurred boundaries ahead )

I’ve been poking my way through the books to be borrowed from the Internet Archive for a while now, just perhaps still concerned about the trouble kicked up when its borrowing limits were removed “for the emergency” last year. In the process of that, I stumbled across a title that brought me back quite a few years. In the first flush of general kicked-up interest about the Internet that got me to the point of being able to connect as well, I’d happened on a “online resources guide” titled Net Trek (although I had to look past its front cover to find that particular capitalization). Its particular narrowing focus did happen to sit well with me, and I did page through it a few times in bookstores at university and elsewhere, although having been pointed to actual online directories through my family’s “how to get your Mac online” book I’d never thought I needed to actually buy this particular volume. Having another chance after so many years to revisit it, though, did amuse me.
( The two edges of nostalgia, and some genuine surprises )

Carving the time out of a week to “watch a movie” can take a bit of work for me. Finding the motivation to watch a movie in that time, rather than just winding up poking away at a bunch of things to perhaps be most left with worried thoughts about a “shortened attention span,” is a different challenge.

In going through the boxes of DVDs I recorded off Turner Classic Movies to make “disk image” backups, though, I did begin considering one title, then got around to watching it at last. It might not be “canonical” (although not that long ago I did manage to watch Singin’ in the Rain, which was entertaining even if I wondered about enjoying the non-musical parts more than its numbers, aware I haven’t had much engagement with “musicals”), but I was interested all the same in Captain Horatio Hornblower.
( From books to movie )